Friendships are created by investing time in them. By interacting and spending time (‘hanging out’) with friends, we build an emotional bond, and this in turn gives us relationships of trust, obligation and reciprocity.

“I wonder how many college students are looking for #cmtymgmt #octribe internships? Thinking about creating “community college” =)”

I have not nailed down all the details yet, but I’m trying to live my life as a draft, so I’m thinking out loud here.

Essentially, I’m trying to collect a group of folks interested in community cultivation, but who might not have quite the amount of experience many companies are looking for. We would talk shop about community cultivation, and I would be available as a resource to both the company and the intern, but the intern would get a TON of hands on experience.

Every time I hear a company, agency, or “social media guru” talk about getting something to go viral, I puke in my mouth. Just a little bit. (I won’t even get into the downside of being a virus right now.) I just wish more of these folks would use their energy and creativity to focus on being meaningful in the lives of the people they want to reach, by providing value to them.

“If there’s a formula, then you’re doing it wrong,” Glover says. “It really is a social dynamic, being part of folks’ lives in a meaningful way.”

Back in the video days of Seesmic it was very easy to ‘humanize’ our users. They were real talking faces streaming down our screens all day long. I got to know many of them very well. Literally watching them laugh and cry, some at their lowest moments without hope, others during a wedding ceremony or the first moments with a new child. We flew from around the world to cram ourselves into a basement in the middle of winter, just to hang out with each other. So many of these people are still my good friends today.

For many companies, however, it is not that easy to see the people behind the usernames. Especially not on such a consistent and personal basis. But, no worries, Joe Heitzeberg came up with a wonderful solution:

How do you take a team that’s swamped with work and make them become incredibly customer focused overnight? … Every day, print out a few hundred new user photo thumbnails and post them on the walls.

Most companies I have spoken with–who are reluctant to explore the customer development process–feel that talking to customers is too hard and don’t even know where to begin. The secret (there is no secret) is to just start. It is much easier to have done something, than to think about doing something. In other words, JUMP IN!

Anythony Tjan has provided a great exercise that should make it easier get started:

You can learn a great deal about customers by studying the broader context in which they use your product or service. To do this, ask what your customer is doing three minutes immediately before and three minutes after he uses your product or service…

If you still need a little help, (i.e. want to wear a life jacket and an inner-tube before jumping in) then you need to learn how to ask your customers questions. The secret (there is not secret) is to just start. Pick one customer you have spoken to before (not so scary) and ask them those two questions: (1) What were you doing 3 minutes before you last used our product? (2) What were you doing 3 minutes after you last used our product?

Don’t create a form. Don’t send out a mass email. Don’t assign it to your sales team. Don’t make your intern do it. Pick up the phone and call one customer. You don’t need to promise them anything, and you better not try and defend yourself or your product. Just listen, learn, and share the love by saying thank you.

I would love to come back to these tweets and dig in a little further under the surface. But, I wanted to at least quickly capture some of the thoughts inspired by this morning’s sessions at DreamForce. (The #’s link out to the original tweet.)

Do you have a visual, defined, roadmap for customer success that you use internally AND share with your customers? #

Ricardo Nunez made a comment in a previous post, that got me thinking about the transition from “engage and help everybody” to “the community maintaining itself”? A noble goal for cultivating a community. Though, like infinity, it is a goal you can never really reach. But, I wanted to share a few observations I’ve made that help move communities in that direction.

Part 1: Over Eager GreeterThis one took me quite some time to recognize. My own excitement about greeting new members the second they joined the community (most services have the option to shoot off an email when there is a new member) meant that other members of the community didn’t get the chance. Obviously they could have gone up to greet people as well. But 8 (or 8000) “hi, welcome to x, let me know if you have any questions” would be awkward. and overbearing.

Related to this, some people just want to check out a new community. Maybe they don’t feel like they have *joined* anything yet, so pouncing on them the minute they “walk in the door” can throw them off guard and cause them to raise their defenses.

I don’t believe there is a magic number (i.e. 1 day or 386 minutes) of how long to wait before greeting new members. All communities have different cultures and purposes. Some have hundreds of messages/notifications per day. Some only meet once a month. Etc.

With each community (you probably have more than one in each organization) I try to figure out how much time someone might need to get a feel for the place, as well as the average time it takes for members the seize their opportunity to say hello first. Finally, I write the numbers down, and ask a few members if those numbers make sense. With that information in hand, I have a decent guideline for how long to wait before extending my own greeting.